
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 11, 1995                   TAG: 9502140005
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BRIEFLY PUT ...

THE NUMBER of centenarians in industrialized nations is rising, notes a recent report, and the U.S. population follows the trend. But specific figures are unreliable, it adds, because they are largely self-reported. Old people and those answering census questions for them tend to inflate their ages.

Funny how people spend most of their adult lives subtracting years from their age, until they near that magic 100 mark. Then everyone wants to go for the gold.

DAN QUAYLE'S announcement this week that he won't seek the 1996 Republican nomination for president doubtless disappoints his supporters. Doubtless even more disappointed are talk-show gag writers, for whom Quayle's bloopers and malapropisms provided such a rich source of material when he was vice president.

Don't worry. President Clinton and the remaining field of wanna-be's have shown enough symptoms of foot-in-mouth disease to keep the professional wags in business.

by CNB